Dr. James Kauffman was charged with his wife’s murder at a hearing in Mays Landing, N.J. A week after his court appearance, he was found dead of an apparent suicide in his jail cell at the Hudson County Correctional Facility, officials said.CreditCreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

LINWOOD, N.J. — One morning in 2012, a handyman who helped April Kauffman care for her collection of exotic birds showed up at her house tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac and found his boss lying face down on her bedroom floor. She had been shot twice. The door to the house had been left unlocked.

In Linwood, an affluent suburb outside Atlantic City, some had to strain to remember the last time there had been a murder. Ms. Kauffman’s killing alarmed the community. She was well-known. She appeared regularly on a local radio station, and had owned businesses, including a cafe and a hair salon. She was an advocate for military veterans and involved in several charities. Her husband was a prominent doctor.

Her friends organized vigils. Her colleagues at the radio station pressured the authorities to focus on the case. Local newspapers wrote article after article. Yet months turned into years, and there were no arrests and no answers.

Then, the county prosecutor announced recently that more than five years after she had been killed, investigators had solved the case. Her husband, Dr. James Kauffman, had been charged with first-degree murder.

But it was the circumstances surrounding her death that truly stunned those who knew her: Dr. Kauffman, an endocrinologist, is accused of partnering with a motorcycle gang to distribute prescription opioids. Prosecutors said she was killed by a hit man hired by her husband and a gang leader after Ms. Kauffman threatened to expose their “financial empire.”

Image

April Kauffman, 47, was shot to death in 2012 in her home in Linwood, N.J. Her husband, Dr. James Kauffman, had been charged with first-degree murder. He was found dead Friday in his jail cell.CreditMark Makela for The New York Times

“I thought at first, my God, how did I not know who this man was?” said Kimberly Pack, Ms. Kauffman’s daughter from a previous relationship. “This man was around my children. It’s overwhelming — it’s overwhelming — and at the end of the day, it just makes you sad. I think I’m still trying to wrap my brain around why I am here right now.”

Now, days after he was charged, Dr. Kauffman was also dead. His alleged partners had threatened to kill him, prosecutors say, and he had made threats in the past to take his own life.

‘Money, greed, drugs’

When Damon G. Tyner took office last year as the Atlantic County prosecutor, he asked his staff to compile a list of unsolved homicide cases going back to 1970. They came back with about 120. Ms. Kauffman’s was one his staff believed that, with a renewed investigation, they could “make some breaks,” he said.

It quickly grew into something more complicated than a straightforward murder case.

Doctors across the country have been accused of turning their practices into “pill mills” distributing prescription narcotics. In some cases, doctors have been charged with murder for overprescribing opioids, like fentanyl and oxycodone, to people who fatally overdosed. New Jersey, like many parts of the country, has been in the grip of the deadliest drug crisis in United States history. In Atlantic County, where Dr. Kauffman practiced, more than 160 drug-related deaths, many of which were from opioid overdoses, were recorded in 2016.

“As big a figure April cut in this community, this case ultimately became larger than her,” Mr. Tyner said in an interview. “I think this was driven by pure narcissistic, sociopathic behavior that is underscored by money, greed, drugs — all of it.”

Image

April Kauffman’s daughter, Kimberly Pack, center, at a court hearing for Dr. James Kauffman, who had been charged with first-degree murder a week before he was found dead in his jail cell.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

It is unclear how the operation began, but Dr. Kauffman and Ferdinand Augello, a local leader of the Pagan motorcycle gang, were believed to be at the top, according to court documents. Dr. Kauffman would give prescriptions to people sent by Mr. Augello, investigators said. Mr. Augello had at least two recruiters who, in turn, would enlist more people who would turn to Dr. Kauffman for prescriptions for OxyContin.

As the narcotics operation was ramping up, however, Dr. Kauffman’s relationship with his wife became increasingly fractured, prosecutors said. She wanted a divorce. To get it, she said she would spend as much money as she could until he relented, and she also threatened to expose Dr. Kauffman’s drug operation. Prosecutors accused Dr. Kauffman of plotting to kill his wife rather than cede “half his empire.”

He told Mr. Augello of the threat, prosecutors said. Mr. Augello started looking for someone he could hire to kill Ms. Kauffman, asking Pagans and others connected to the gang. It took him nearly a year. On the morning of May 10, 2012, prosecutors said, Francis Mulholland was given a gun and dropped off at the couple’s house at the end of Woodstock Drive, where the door had been left unlocked. (Eighteen months later, Mr. Mulholland, 46, was found by the police on his living room floor, dead from a heroin overdose, the authorities said.)

After her killing, prosecutors said, the drug operation continued for five years. Officials did not specify how much money the operation made, but according to court records, the proceeds were used to buy property in Arizona, cars, guns and guitars.

But it was effectively shut down in June, when investigators searched Dr. Kauffman’s office and home as part of a broader drug-related investigation. At his office, the authorities said, Dr. Kauffman pulled out a handgun and threatened to kill himself, saying, “I’m not going to jail for this.” He eventually surrendered and had been detained since.

Mr. Augello was also charged with first-degree murder and several others were accused of racketeering for their suspected part in the drug operation. Investigators claimed in court records to have conversations recorded by a confidential informant in which Mr. Augello discusses the drug operation and Ms. Kauffman’s murder. In court, prosecutors also accused Mr. Augello of plotting to kill Dr. Kauffman over fears he had “flipped on him.”

A lawyer for Mr. Augello said he maintained his innocence.

Dr. Kauffman, who was moved to a jail outside of Atlantic County because of the threat, shuffled into a courtroom for a recent proceeding in an orange jacket and stared at the floor as prosecutors described the case against him. Louis M. Barbone, his lawyer, said Dr. Kauffman denied the charges and that it would become clear at trial that “instead this was a conspiratorial plot to kill Kauffman.”

On Friday morning, a week after his court appearance, his body was discovered in his cell in the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, N.J. Officials disclosed few details about the circumstances but said it appeared that Dr. Kauffman, who was 68, had apparently killed himself.

‘She was a fighter’

Over the years, the void left by the stalled investigation was filled with conjecture. The gossip was incessant. Before the charges, little in the way of solid information had emerged. Her daughter and friends grew frustrated.

“We’ve been fighting for five and a half years for justice,” said Lee Darby, a close friend of Ms. Kauffman’s. “You try to start figuring it out on your own. You spend hour after hour trying to put the pieces together and they never fit. It’s like you’re constantly trying to get someone to listen.”

Image

The home in Linwood, N.J., that April Kauffman shared with her husband, Dr. James Kauffman. Ms. Kauffman, 47, was found shot to death in a bedroom of the home, which is for sale.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

Dr. Kauffman had long been viewed with suspicion. Ms. Kauffman’s family and friends pointed to a lawsuit he filed over his wife’s life insurance, and his auctioning of many of Ms. Kauffman’s possessions. (Her friends raised money to buy back items for her daughter.)

The marriage had been the third for both of them. Ms. Kauffman, 47, was described as a “ball of energy” — confident and outgoing, talking with every waitress and store clerk she encountered, her friends said. Dr. Kauffman was seen by some as taciturn. Arthur Gropper, a local radio host who goes by King Arthur, said the doctor was “low key,” but he remembered how the doctor gave him advice when his mother was ill.

“I considered him a friend,” Mr. Gropper said. “I was the 1 percent who thought maybe he didn’t do it.”

Ms. Kauffman had come a long way. She had never known her father, friends said, and she was separated from her siblings as a child. She was mostly raised by her grandmother. After she became pregnant with her daughter as a senior in high school, she trained to be a hairdresser.

Her life with Dr. Kauffman was, in many ways, a comfortable one. They shared a 7,000-square-foot house outfitted with a “bird room” that included parrots and other birds and, in the basement, a small salon, where she styled her friends’ hair. They traveled and had another house in Arizona. She rode motorcycles and had a red Corvette. “She liked to go fast,” Ms. Pack said.

Image

Prosecutors have said Ferdinand Augello (center) hired a man to kill April Kauffman, who had threatened to reveal the opioid prescription drug ring Mr. Augello is suspected of running with her husband, Dr. James Kauffman. Dr. Kauffman was found dead in his jail cell on Friday, Jan. 26.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

She became devoted to veterans causes, focusing on issues like improving access to health care. She had met generals and visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which, Ms. Pack said, was one of the few times she had seen her mother cry.

“Life didn’t start off so easy for her,” Ms. Pack said. “But she was a survivor, she was a fighter, and because of the way she grew up, she always fought for the underdog.”

First small wave of relief

Lately, the house at the end of the block has sat empty. On a recent afternoon, plants on the front steps had wilted to brown stalks, cardboard boxes were scattered in the yard and a “for sale” sign stood by the curb.

For her daughter and her friends, the effort to keep a spotlight on the case had been an endurance test. Hope, as much as they wished otherwise, felt like it was waning. Mr. Gropper still brought up her case regularly on his show, where Ms. Kauffman had once appeared weekly. But, he conceded, “I don’t think we thought there was going to be a resolution to this.”

Ms. Pack said she was alerted shortly before the announcement this month that charges would be coming, but was not told anything else. She gathered with her family and some of her mother’s friends to watch the prosecutor’s televised news conference.

Image

Inside a courthouse in Mays Landing, N.J., Kimberly Pack was consoled by friends after her mother’s husband was charged with her murder.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

Ms. Pack felt a small wave of relief. “For the first time — it might sound a little silly — it feels like I can breathe,” she said.

Losing her mother was painful, she said, but the lack of certainty over who was responsible added another layer of anguish. For years, her life had been defined by coping, which she did by plowing energy into her job, as a pharmaceutical representative, and into raising her sons, who are now 7 and 11. “You become a robot,” she said. “Your emotions are pushed so deep down and sequestered so you can function.”

The rush of developments after years of inertia has pushed those who have been keeping vigil for Ms. Kauffman to think about where they are in the grieving process.

“I’ve been stuck on May 10, 2012, all this time,” Ms. Darby said, “and I feel like I can find peace, just because there’s answers. They may not be all the answers, but someone has been charged.”

But for Peggy O’Boyle, a childhood friend of Ms. Kauffman’s, the pain is still raw.

“I’ll never accept it,” she said. “There’s no relief here. It’s never going to bring her back.”

Mr. Gropper recently listened to his last show with Ms. Kauffman, recorded the day before she died. Her words, hearing them now, were haunting. She mentioned feeling like she was living on “borrowed time,” and said her daughter and grandsons would be her “legacy.” She even imagined her own funeral — how she hoped for military aircraft to fly overhead and how she wished to be remembered, as an “American citizen who really dug her heels in and yelled fire and expected it to be put out.”

Her funeral came four days later. Veterans arrived on motorcycles carrying American flags. Her daughter talked about her mother’s perseverance, and her friends described her work to improve the world around her. Her husband was there, too. He wept. He said he did not know what he would do without her.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Mystery of a Murdered Wife Leads to a ‘Pill Mill’ and a Jail Death. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe